Managing Your Wardrobe: Pregnancy, Post-Partum and All Those Sizes in Between
I don’t know about you, but as I’ve been having babies these past 8 years, managing my wardrobe and all of the various sizes it includes has become more challenging.
Today, I’m over at Simple Mom, sharing my recent closet purge and what I did to make sense of my wardrobe-of-many-sizes:
I’ve read plenty of good advice on wardrobe management and how to purge your closet, but there’s one piece of advice that doesn’t jive with this mama of four: get rid of anything that doesn’t fit or that you haven’t worn in the last year.
If I followed their advice, I would have to dispose of the four different sizes of clothing I rotate through to accomodate my various seasons of motherhood… skinny pre-pregnancy, early pregnancy (not showing, but nothing fits), full-on maternity, and post-baby (how did my hips spread this wide?).
It’s a fact of life. When you are in the midst of bearing sweet babies, your pant size goes up. And then down. And then back up again.
Being 9 weeks out of having my fourth baby, I know this full well. The maternity clothes are now baggy and frumpy, yet the skinny clothes barely get over my hips. I’m lost somewhere in the middle. Fellow mothers, I know you feel my pain. Purging my closet fully isn’t an option, but I still needed a way to make peace with my wardrobe in the meantime.
I can’t wait to read the rest of this post! I SOOOOO need it right now! I feel like I am swimming in a sea of excessive clothes–but I have no idea what size I will be after baby comes!
It really is hard to know what will fit after baby. I would recommend, though, that you start washing and having some things ready before you give birth. I did that with my 3rd and it was so helpful to have some things clean and ready to try on. With my 4th, I didn’t get around to it and then I was struggling to wash all of my musty clothes from storage in the midst of being tired and washing mounds of baby laundry, and I was a bit annoyed with myself that I had nothing to wear that first week or two.
Thanks for the tip! I can see myself getting completely overwhelmed w/ the laundry of new baby clothes and clothes for me! I need to make sure I do that this summer!
This is going to be so relevant to me here very soon!
A few weeks ago I finally put my regular sized shirts in a box in the closet–maternity shirts are moving in! After baby arrives in three months, I’ll be wondering what just happened to my shape and why don’t these jeans fit anymore?! I’m sure I’m going to be experiencing that hip spread thing, too!
If this is your first baby, you might find that the hips issue isn’t too bad. With my first, I was back in regular pants within 4 weeks (though I’ve heard that is a little fast). But it’s been with subsequent babies I’ve had a harder time… more like 2-5 months. Silly hips. But the babies are worth it! 🙂
Ok, so I need advice! Ten months post-partum with my first baby, I’ve found all my weight has “shifted” to different areas. My hips are actually narrower than before pregnancy, but my waist has grown. All my pants slide awkwardly around while simultaneously pinching my midline. I tend to purge my closet often; should I get rid of everything that doesn’t fit now or will I grow back into it? Help!
Oh, that’s so hard to answer. Things really do change after your first baby, and then not so dramatically after subsequent babies. But, 10 months is probably enough time to know whether you will fit something again or not. If it were me, I might keep the things that are really close to fitting, but anything that still obviously doesn’t fit might need to go. With future babies, I bet that you will find that you can go back to pre-pregnancy clothes more easily because the size changes will be more predictable. Probably. Don’t quote me on it, ok? 🙂 I’d love to hear anyone else’s thoughts!
I am SO GLAD this post appeared today! I feel crazy with all these clothes… What to do? I do have 3 bags to take to consignment, but there is SO much more where that came from.
Consignment is so great. I love the chance to earn at least a bit of money for the things that I am getting rid of.
a week and a half post baby and i am feeling the clothes pain too!!
I so understand. I am waiting daily for my fourth to arrive. The way I handle it is go through things as I’m about to enter that size. I try to eliminate anything that doesn’t look good on me, outdated or no longer fits my tastes (like some of my teenage style clothing), or that I usually avoid wearing for whatever reason. I recently got rid of some shirts I didn’t wear at all between my last child and this pregnancy. I had the chance to wear them but avoided them (something as simple as riding too high under the arms). It helps if I remember if I accidentally purge too much, I’ll HAVE to buy something new 🙂 What a punishment!
I am still working on this. I have a closet full of clothes, all different sizes, and I constantly find myself trying to figure out what fits. My 4th baby is ten months old, and my body changed more drastically with this one than it did with my first three. I don’t think the hips are going all the way back this time! One piece of advice I would give is to pack away clothes that you don’t fit into but do want to keep, label the tub or bag and keep it close. For instance, rather than putting it in the attic or a storage unit, place it under your bed or on a shelf in your closet-somewhere handy. I have one tub that I keep for this purpose, and clothes kind of rotate in and out of it as they fit…or don’t. 🙂 I am hoping to get down to having just that one tub of extras that I am rotating in and out of. Does all that rambling make sense? Hope it helps someone!
Yes, that’s very true. I keep my bin of soon-to-fit clothes on the floor in my closet, so that I can reach it easily and check which things have begun to fit again. Good advice! 🙂
I’ve had two little boys and we still desire to have more children, so I’m taking the “pack it up for later” approach to my wardrobe. In the year after our second was born, I lost pregnancy weight plus an additional 30 lbs so pretty much everything I owned didn’t fit me. But, I knew we wanted more children, and there would be that inevitable awkward size time post-partum, so I just put all my maternity clothes in a big storage box and all my non-maternity (but too big for now) clothes in another big box and stuck them in the attic. Since I don’t have much extra $ for shopping, a friend of mine and I started a ladies clothing swap at our church (after reading the article on this blog about one!). That really helped me build a small wardrobe of things that fit now. If you haven’t seen it, http://www.thetinytwig.com/ has some great tips about simplifying your wardrobe for what works best for you.